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Summary
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An engaged couple has postponed their wedding because frequent arguments leave both partners feeling unwanted. A reader describes tension between emotional connection and sexual expectations and asks what they can do next.
The response describes a cycle in which mutual hurt reduces closeness and increases further conflict, emphasizing that both partners contribute to the relationship pattern.
It encourages concrete communication about needs, recognition of efforts to repair, and couples counseling, while questioning whether the relationship can improve if one partner insists that all change must come from the other.
Question
Reader · Identity withheldI’ve been with my fiancée for four years, though our relationship has been on and off. We got engaged this past August but we’ve decided to cancel our wedding date for now. We both feel there are important issues we need to address before moving forward with any plans.
\nLately, I feel like I can’t do anything right and he feels the same. We get frustrated with each other easily and can both be stubborn. A lot of our fights, about 90%, stem from him saying I don’t make him feel attractive, sexy, or wanted.
\nHe seems to believe the only way to feel wanted is through sex, but for me, it’s more than that. I need to feel desired in other ways too. My desire for sex depends heavily on how connected I feel to him and how much we argue. When he constantly points out what I’m doing wrong, I tend to pull away. He says I need to “change how things affect me,” and that if I don’t, it means he isn’t important enough to me.
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We argue about simple things. When he brings up problems, he often becomes “firm,” which feels rude and hurtful to me. He insists that it’s just his tone and that he’s not being hateful. He’s accused me of being hateful as well and I’ve worked hard to change that. He’s even told me he appreciates the effort I’ve made.
\nHe has a mechanic hobby shop and often works there late into the evening, sometimes until 10 or 11 pm. He does make time for me, even coming in early on some nights but the other night he got upset because he said he had to “fight to spend time with me” since I was in the shower too long.
\nWhere do we go from here? Right now, he expects me to “change how things affect me” so that my sexual desire isn’t influenced by our conflicts. I don’t know how to do that or if it’s even something I should be working on. He says that if I don’t change, it means he “doesn’t mean enough to me.” I feel like he can’t be happy unless we have sex at least three times a week.
\nWhat’s the next step for us?
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Answer
Ann LandersHonestly, I’m not sure. Relationships require compromise, but compromise is not possible until both partners grow a certain level of tolerance for the various ways that each partner is different from the other. You both don’t seem to be very tolerant of the other’s differences right now.
\nEach of you is wanting something from the other that isn’t happening. You are wanting your fiancée to be more demonstrably loving, respectful and available to you. He is wanting you to be similarly more available, both in terms of time and in terms of sexual availability. You are both feeling hurt by the other partners’ difficulty in complying, and that creates anger and frustration and hurt feelings that create a negative feedback loop. The more you feel hurt, the less you are available to be loving, and the more that the other partner feels hurt in return. Your mutual hurt is effectively feeding off one another and making things worse rather than better.
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When your boyfriend says that he is not meaning to be hateful, that this is \"just his tone\" I expect from his point of view he is speaking honestly. He doesn’t intend for his actions to appear hateful. That’s nice for him, but it doesn’t help you because in concrete terms, that tone of voice he takes on is hurtful to you. His intentions effectively don’t matter because his actual actions end up being hurtful by the only judge who counts, which is you.
\nThe same applies to your behavior. If he judges you to be unavailable to him, it doesn’t matter if you don’t think you are being unavailable. That is his perception and unless you think he is just psychotic and completely off base in his assertions (in which case, what are you doing with him?) then he may have a point that you are unavailable to him.
\nNeither of you needs to change if you don’t want to. However, clearly what you are both doing for each other isn’t working well. Your behavior is ineffective in getting you want you want. You both might want to reevaluate how you’re acting towards each other in this light to see if making changes in how you interact will make your mutual situation better.
\nPart of the problem is that you have not been clear with one another what each of you needs from the other. You want him to be less hurtful for instance, but what does that really mean? It might mean that you need him to use a different tone of voice when he speaks to you, that you need him not to wag his finger at you when he speaks (if he does that), etc.
\nThe more you can define what being non-hurtful looks like in very explicitly even stupidly concrete terms the more chance you have of getting what you want. If you don’t define your terms and desires explicitly with one another, each of you will have different definitions of what it means to fulfill being non-hurtful, and you will end up being more hurt with one another when the other accuses you of being hurtful when you’ve been trying so hard (in your own terms) to be better.
\nInsult is added to injury in that circumstance, because in addition to being attacked, your efforts to be better go unrecognized. It is really important to recognize one another’s positive attempts at repair. If you want to read a great book about the importance of making expectations concrete, I can recommend Dr. Gregory Lester’s Power With People.
\nYour fiancée is trying to make this relationship problem into your problem rather than seeing the problem as a relationship problem that you both own. This is a disturbing sign that you should pay close attention to. If he cannot learn to see his own contribution to the problem, that doesn’t bode well for your happy future together.
\nThe urge to externalize a problem (to make it someone else’s problem rather than owning your own contribution to the problem) can be a sign of social and emotional immaturity, it can simply be a sign of someone who was raised very traditionally with rigid gender role expectations in place (e.g., the man acts this way and the woman acts this way and no deviation from that pattern is acceptable), or it can be a defensive coping mechanism that occurs when people feel stressed.
\nNo compromise is possible so long as your fiancée holds on to this defensive stance. You won’t be able to respect him (because he is asking for something unrealistic), and neither will you be able to placate him (because you will find he is never satisfied with what you do. The relationship ceases to be a negotiation and instead becomes a supplication. No good.
\nSee if you can gently gently gently call his attention to the fact that you are both participants creating the problems between you and that it simply cannot be all your responsibility to fix things. If he really won’t back off from his tendency to externalize then I recommend seriously reevaluating whether this relationship is worth staying in.
\nUnderstanding that your fiancée’s sex drive may be stronger than your own (at least for the time being), think about if you can commit to being available to him sexually whether you are really into it or not on a several times a week basis (of your choosing). This would not be capitulation so much as an attempt to give him what he is needing, and as as a positive gesture and gift you can give to him; a way of taking care of him and helping him to feel valued and recognized.
\nGranted, this may be a chore for you, and it may need to be a quickie; you probably won’t get off yourself. This won’t be worth doing if you only feel resentful about it. But if you can offer this to him as a loving gift, then you may be able to set up a positive feedback loop, where you do something for him and he becomes motivated to do something for you.
\nIn return for giving him something he needs, it is perfectly okay for you to ask for something you need (in stupidly explicit and concrete detail so that he can’t misinterpret what you want). If you need him to value you beyond sex, then figure out a way he can demonstrate to you that he values you in a way that will work for you and ask him to do it. Maybe it will be that he commits to taking you out dancing once a week.
\nMaybe he will cook for you. Maybe he will tell you that he loves you and look you in the eye when he says it. Maybe he will make something for you in his craft workshop. It’s up to you what you will find pleasing and what will be proof of his multifaceted love to you.
\nIt goes without saying that couples counseling would be a good idea. You two love each other, but aren’t managing to communicate your needs well enough with each other. Neither are you managing to both mutually take responsibility for your individual roles in causing the problems (him more than you, apparently).
\nThis has to stop. A third party counselor can be a force to help you listen to each other effectively and learn how to give each other what each of you needs in a more effective manner. You aren’t managing to do this on your own, so it is certainly worth a shot to try it another way.
\nGood luck.
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